Jefferson-Walton-Muscogee County GaArchives Biographies.....Harris, Robert Hamilton 1842 - living in 1913
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Author: William Harden
p. 991-995
ROBERT HAMILTON HARRIS, A. M., D. D. With a long and distinguished career in
the law, as an educator and in the ministry, Dr. Harris, who is now residing in
Cairo, Georgia, but purposes to return about November 1, 1913, to Columbus, is
one of the eminent Georgians whose lives extend over the greatest epochs of the
last and present century, and his beneficent activities are a matter of pride to
all residents of the state. Both his own career and the record of his family
have unusual interest, and the following paragraphs will treat these subjects as
fully as possible.
Robert Hamilton Harris was born on the Holly Springs Plantation, the country
home of his father, Dr. Bennett Harris, an Augusta physician, in Jefferson
county, Georgia, April 19, 1842.
Going back to the founder of the family in America, it is believed, from' the
best information obtainable, that the first ancestors were natives of either
England or Wales, and during colonial times came and settled in Virginia. In
Virginia, was born the head of the next generation, John Harris, who removed
from his native state to Sampson county, North Carolina, where he spent the rest
of his life. Benjamin Harris, grandfather of Dr. Harris and son of John, was
born in Sampson county, was a soldier in the Revolutionary war, enlisting while
a lad, and some time after the close of that conflict removed to South Carolina,
and later to Georgia, becoming a pioneer settler in Walton county. He secured
land there, which was virgin soil, cleared a plantation and made his home at
Social Circle until his death. The maiden name of his wife was Bethany Odom, who
had three brothers, named Elkanah, Halatia and Deldatha. She survived her
husband and lived to be about ninety years of age.
Dr. Bennett Harris, father of the Rev. Dr. Harris, was born in Edgefield
district, South Carolina, in 1805. Though his early life was spent in a period
marked by a dearth of good schools and in a country just emerging from the
wilderness state, he made the best use of his scant opportunities to secure a
good education and became a student in the state university in Athens, Georgia,
where he was contemporary of the Cobbs and Hillyers. He undertook to work his
way through the latter institution, by manual service about the buildings and
grounds; but his strength failed him, and he was prostrated by fever. He was
beginning to despair of completing his education, when Major Walker, a prominent
citizen of Athens, became interested in him and advanced him the necessary
amount of money to carry him through school to graduation. He then became a
teacher, and after paying off his indebtedness and accumulating some earnings,
entered the Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia. After receiving a
full diploma in medicine and surgery from that institution he took a post
graduate course in medicine at the Eclectic School, Cincinnati, Ohio. He
subsequently went abroad, studied and acquired extensive experience in clinics
at the noted medical institutions of Paris during two years, and later spent one
year of like work in London. Returning to America, in 1839, he located in
Augusta, Georgia, and was in that city when its first great epidemic of yellow
fever occurred. He and Dr. Turpin, with the two Doctors Eve, were the only
physicians with such a sense of devotion to duty as to remain in the
plague-stricken city. Dr. Harris was, himself, ultimately stricken down with the
fever, but recovered and continued in practice until his death in 1845. Dr.
Harris was married, in 1840, to Rebekah Ann Baldy, who was born in Beaufort
District, South Carolina, a daughter of Stephen and Elizabeth (Dixon) Baldy.
Many interesting things might be said about the family of Elizabeth Dixon.
Her grandfather was James Smithson, one of the first land-graves of the province
of South Carolina. It is related that an English sea captain was compelled to
put his ship into Port Royal harbor for repairs and, while waiting, was
entertained in the home of Governor Smithson. When the captain left he gave the
governor a sack of seeds from India. Those seeds were grains of rice in the
rough, which were planted by Governor Smithson; and the tradition is that from
that little planting originated rice culture in America. The mother of Elizabeth
Dixon was a lineal descendant of Gilbert Hamilton, of Scotland, a friend of
William Wallace and Robert Bruce, whose cause for the liberation of Scotland he
espoused, participating, as a soldier and prominent officer, in the great battle
of Bannockburn, which resulted in seating Bruce upon the throne. For his
distinguished services in that cause, Robert Bruce gave him a patent of
nobility, by virtue of which he became progenitor of the noble line of Dukes of
Hamilton. The present title-holder of that line is Duke Frederick Hamilton,
residing on his Irish estate at Baroncourt.
Dr. Robert Harris has now in his home at Cairo, Georgia, among his family
heirlooms, a beautiful collection of solid silver pieces, of inestimable value,
upon all the large pieces of which is engraved the Hamilton "crest"—a saw
cutting into an oak, with the word "through," in capitals above. This silver
service has been handed down from generation to generation for many centuries,
and is one of the rarest and most interesting collections to be found in
America. Dr. Harris also possesses the original family coat-of-arms, beautifully
hand-painted on parchment and containing no bar-sinister—a fact of which he is
justly proud. He also has the little christening stole, with hood and mittens,
worn by the Hamilton babies during that church ceremonial for ages in the past.
Those heirlooms came down to him through his mother, who in her orphaned
girlhood went with her aunt, Miss Elizabeth Hamilton, to reside with a
great-aunt, Miss Margaret Hamilton, in Dublin, Ireland, by invitation and until
the death of the latter, of whom she became the heir. At the death of Miss
Margaret, Miss Baldy returned with her aunt, Miss Elizabeth, to America, and the
two set up housekeeping in Augusta, Georgia, in 1839, where Miss Elizabeth died
of yellow fever and where Miss Baldy met and was married to her first husband,
Dr. Harris. In the death of Dr. Harris his wife was left a widow with two little
children, Robert and Bennetta, the latter of whom died in 1861. Some years later
Mrs. Harris was married the second time, to Rev. Robert Fleming, a distinguished
teacher, a noted author and a prominent minister of the Baptist denomination.
Her death occurred in Thomasville when she was sixty-one years of age, leaving
as survivors her husband, Mr. Fleming, and three children, her son and two
daughters, Alice and Adela Fleming. Alice and her father died a few years later.
Adela, now Mrs. Smith, for the second time a widow, resides in Waco, Texas.
When the Civil war came on, Robert Hamilton Harris was in college at Mercer
University, but he left school to join the Newman Guards, Company A, First
Georgia Regiment. He was soon transferred, however, to the Thomasville Guards,
Company F, Twenty-ninth Georgia, serving with that command twenty months, along
the Atlantic coast, at Savannah, Charleston, Wilmington and Jacksonville. In
March, 1863, he was promoted to a lieutenancy, in Company A, Fifty-seventh
Georgia Regiment. The captain being absent and the first lieutenant hors de
combat, he was placed in command of his company and so continued until the close
of the war, the first lieutenant soon dying and the captain being promoted to
major. Mr. Harris received in order two more promotions—to first lieutenant and
brevet captain. In that command, he went through the entire Vicksburg campaign,
ending with that dreadful siege; in Johnston's campaign from Dalton to Atlanta;
in Hood's campaign, from Atlanta to Nashville, Tennessee, and back to Corinth,
Mississippi. He was under fire on scores of occasions, many of them extremely
bloody and sometimes when he lost nearly all of his men; but although bullets
frequently pierced his clothing, he never received more than a scratch or two in
the nature of wounds. Besides the service mentioned, he fought Stoneman at
Macon, commanding a regiment part of that day, and starting that general's
defeat by turning his right flank. He was not with his regiment when it
surrendered, under Johnston, at Bentonville, North Carolina, being on detached
service in command of a lunette in defense at Macon against Wilson. He declined
to surrender there, and, breaking through the swarms of Federal cavalry, made
his way home to Thomasville, with only two men who escaped with him.
While a paroled prisoner, after the siege of Vicksburg, Dr. Harris, then just
twenty-one, was married to Mary Martha, daughter of Hon. Peter E. Love, of
Thomasville. On reaching home he read law under his father-in-law, was admitted
to the bar and soon secured a good practice. He was elected mayor of his city,
then after serving two or three years became solicitor of the county court, and
later was appointed counsel for the Atlantic and Gulf Railroad, which extended
from Savannah to Bainbridge and Albany. His health having become greatly
impaired in that service, he decided to abandon the practice of law and later,
in 1876, entered upon the next important phase of his career, as an educator. He
was elected principal of the chief school in Cairo, and spent six years as a
teacher in the local academy. In the meantime he had entered the ministry of the
Baptist denomination. In 1882, he was called to the charge of the school at
Calvary, and, consolidating four rival schools at that point, established the
Calvary High School.
In 1883, he was called to the pastorate of the Baptist church at La Grange,
Georgia, where he continued for two years. From that city he was called to the
great First Church in Columbus, and during his ministry of eight years there
added six hundred members to his charge. His next location was at Troy, Alabama,
where he remained for two years, whence he was called to Thomasville, where he
served the Baptist church for five years. In the meantime and since, he has
received calls and overtures from a number of prominent churches in large cities
that he has not felt at a liberty to consider.
While pastor in La Grange, Dr. Harris was elected a member of the faculty of
the Southern Female College, an institution which was later removed to College
Park, near Atlanta, and became known as Cox College. Being reelected to a
leading chair in Cox College, Dr. Harris resigned his pastorate at Thomasville
and went to that institution, where he remained over three years. There his
health broke down, and he went to Tampa, Florida. While in Tampa, in 1906, after
he had somewhat recuperated, he was called to the Baptist church at Cairo, which
town has since been his home.
Soon after taking charge in Cairo, Dr. Harris commenced a campaign, among his
own members only, to raise funds for the erection of a new church building, and
the result is the present beautiful edifice in that city. The church is built in
the English abbey style of architecture, of the finest pressed brick, the
interior being most unique and very beautiful, with exceedingly handsome
furnishings, and it was finished and equipped without a dollar of debt.
Dr. Harris continued his pastorate in Cairo until March, 1912, at which time
he resigned, in order to become apostolic messenger to the churches of the
Mercer Association.
The degrees of A. M. and D. D. were conferred upon him years ago by Mercer
University, and he has been for many years, as he still is, in great demand as a
speaker on various important occasions in many sections of the country. In
addition to other distinctions, he is also chaplain and major on the staff of
the South Georgia Brigade, U. C. V.
Hon. Peter E. Love, the father of Dr. Harris' wife, was a lawyer by
profession, occupied the superior court bench for many years, was a member of
the United States congress at the time of secession and used his influence in
vain effort to prevent Civil war. He was the Georgia member of the committee of
thirty-three, one from each state of the Union, appointed some time prior to the
outbreak of hostilities, to arrange some compromise which might avert the
imminent war. He died, honored by all who knew him—and there were thousands—in
November, 1866.
Mrs. Harris passed away in 1900, leaving, besides her husband, two sons and
one daughter. Of the sons, James Hamilton Harris is an expert accountant,
resident in Texas, and is unmarried. The other, Amos Love Harris, is in the real
estate business in Tampa, Florida, and was married in 1902 to Mattie Ward
Henderson, a daughter of W. B. Henderson, late deceased, and one of the
wealthiest and most prominent citizens of that city. They have two children,
named Robert Hamilton and Caroline Henderson. Mamie Anne, the third child and
only daughter, was married in 1894 to Edgar Duncan Burts, a prominent young
attorney of Columbus, of brilliant promise, who died in January, 1905, leaving
three children, Mamie Love, Edgar Duncan, Jr., and Sarah Caroline. Besides the
two sons and daughter named there have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Harris five
other children, all boys, and all dead before 1888.
Additional Comments:
From:
A HISTORY OF SAVANNAH AND SOUTH GEORGIA
BY
WILLIAM HARDEN
VOLUME II
ILLUSTRATED
THE LEWIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
CHICAGO AND NEW YORK
1913
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